Three brave profs

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The University of Florida is barring three professors from providing expert testimony in a lawsuit concerning a new state law that restricts voting rights, The Associated Press reports. The university said in a statement that testimony by professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald, and Sharon Austin as paid experts for the plaintiffs would be “adverse to the university’s interests as a state of Florida institution.”

Lawyers for the coalition of civics groups challenging the law said in court papers that the university told the professors their testimony would create a conflict for the school because it would clash with the position of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration. Critics of the Florida law, which reduces drop-box and mail-in voting, say it discriminates against voters of color in violation of the Voting Rights Act. (Washington Post, 5th Nov 2021)

My comment: “… it would clash with the position of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration“.

This is a disgraceful statement. It is part of the remit of an academic to speak freely and stand in opposition to the government of the day when necessary, and this is very necessary! What sort of message does that give to the students of the said professors?: “Don’t rock the boat?”, “Whatever you do, conform?”. “Don’t think for yourself?”. “Your parents are not forking out huge sums to keep you at a university, only to find that you have the audacity to think for yourself”.

I will forebear to comment on De Santis myself. Epicurus wouldn’t have done so either. He would have advised his followers to have nothing to do with politics and politicians. (Associated Press)

Quotation

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“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. George Orwell, quoted in the Washington Examiner

My comment: Maybe he meant telling people to get vaccinated when a plague of some sort comes along?

Still fixated on banning abortion

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In their first abortion case since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the justices reinstated a requirement that women seeking medication abortions pick up a pill in person.”

On its way out the door, the Trump administration made its anti-abortion agenda a priority, and Trump’s loyalist 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court will continue to remind us all of its rejection of science and compassion.

In fierce dissent of the court’s decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor reminded her conservative colleagues that “maintaining the F.D.A.’s in-person requirements” for picking up the drug “during the pandemic … imposes an unnecessary, irrational and unjustifiable undue burden on women seeking to exercise their right to choose.”

Republicans have made it clear that their war against reproductive rights is ongoing, and as the liberal justices push for the Biden administration to revisit the issue. (The Guardian Nov 2, 2021)

My comment: No woman in her right mind terminates a pregnancy casually and without agonized thought and concern. The decision is hers, and no male stranger, priest or politician has a right to pontificate on the matter or ban her from making it, fraught with guilt as it no doubt is. I can easily imagine how hard the decision must be. We should sympathize and console; anything else is deliberate cruelty. A religion. that perpetrates such bullying is a male cult, not a religion of love and care.

Unsolved murders, Part 2

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In 2001, America’s homicide rate jumped 20% from the previous year, the highest increase in modern history, elevated by the body count of the 9/11 terror attacks.

This week that sombre record was broken. Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed that the homicide rate in the US rose 30% between 2019 and 2020 (The Week, 8 October 2021)

My comment: When will Americans put two and two together and regulate guns?
( Answer: never. It’s too late. The death rate can only continue to grow. This is not the fault of the guns; it is the result of decades of stubborn misreading of the Constitution. Admittedly, the relevant sentence of the Constitution is badly drafted, but the intent was, I believe, humane and intelligent if you can draw conclusions from the rest of the document).